Going Completely Insane Out of an ‘Abundance of Caution’

[mountaineer]

December 15, 2021
Going Completely Insane Out of an ‘Abundance of Caution’
Noah Rothman

Throughout 2020, the phrase “abundance of caution” confronted you at almost every turn. Justifiably so. A deadly pandemic had descended across the globe. There were no pharmaceutical interventions that could prevent the worst outcomes as a result of infection. Society and its institutions were obliged to do whatever it took to keep caseloads low and preserve hospital capacity. Those conditions are no longer operative, but the “abundance of caution” persists. When the phrase is deployed today, however, it is to justify policies that have no other rational basis.

Examples of this particular mania are, well, abundant. But some notable examples of this socially desirable madness do stand out.

This week, Cornell University went to “Alert Level Red,” not in response to an acute coronavirus outbreak but in anticipation of one. Due to “preliminary” evidence that the “highly contagious Omicron variant” of COVID-19 in tests, and even though “case numbers currently remain low,” the campus is canceling events, closing buildings, making exams virtual, and locking down their students “out of an abundance of caution.” Though the university acknowledged the early evidence suggesting that the Omicron variant is less severe than its predecessors, its transmissibility means case rates are likely to climb. And “outbreaks must be taken seriously,” even if the 97 percent of school’s students, faculty, and administrators who are fully vaccinated are at very little risk.  ...

In the NHL, only one player is still unvaccinated (though he caught the disease and has some natural immunities as a result). And yet, the same measures that were put in place in the darkest days of 2020 are still being implemented, not because we lack the tools to fight the pandemic, but out of “an abundance of caution.”   ...

This week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken cut short a diplomatic tour of Southeast Asia when a reporter traveling with his delegation tested positive for COVID. Blinken, of course, is fully vaccinated and has never tested positive himself. His delegation is similarly immunized, and they are all subject to a rigorous testing regime. Nevertheless, State Department Spokesman Ned Price explained that Blinken would be coming home early to “mitigate the risk of the spread of COVID-19” and only “out of an abundance of caution.”  ...

Read entire article at Commentary

Gee, people are acting like the vaccines are irrelevant to protecting one's health. 

[mountaineer]

Mostly, what we're seeing in "abundance" is stupidity and gullibility.

[jmyrlefuller]

Gee, people are acting like the vaccines are irrelevant to protecting one's health. 

It's all so weird.

OK, we have a vaccine resistant strain starting to spread. The first round of vaccines failed to do their job and prevent outbreaks. So what's the government's response? Oh, we don't need to reformulate the vaccines. Just get a booster of the same vaccine that didn't work long-term the first time! Nor are we assessing what went wrong with Delta, why the vaccine antibodies still work on it but it failed to stop the spread—and why antibodies alone are not an accurate picture.

Then in Cuomostan and Kalifornia they're bringing back the muzzle mandates that didn't do squat in 2020, without concern for costs and benefits ("It's so easy!" they insist while insisting something else must be the cause of all the decline in empathy across the country, and probably the world).

Either the government doesn't know what it's doing, or it knows full well what it's doing and is intentionally trying to drag this crisis on as long as it can while still giving the illusion that everything that's failed so far is better than any other alternative. Which, of course, it isn't.

[mountaineer]

The first round of vaccines failed to do their job and prevent outbreaks. So what's the government's response? Oh, we don't need to reformulate the vaccines. Just get a booster of the same vaccine that didn't work long-term the first time!

Exactly, and it's utterly absurd.